Tuesday is deadline for relief deal, Pelosi says

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set a Tuesday deadline for more progress with the White House on a fiscal stimulus deal before the Nov. 3 election, while President Donald Trump renewed his offer to go beyond the dollar amounts now on the table.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said Sunday that an economic stimulus deal must be struck within 48 hours in order for Congress to pass legislation before Election Day, but she noted that significant differences still divide her and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Pelosi’s on-again-off

again talks with Mnuchin over a deal costing between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion have been dragging on for months without producing results. The window for action is narrowing fast. For the first time, Pelosi put a deadline on them, indicating that if no agreement can be struck by Tuesday, it will not be possible to produce a new relief deal by the election. Pelosi and Mnuchin spoke for 75 minutes on Saturday and agreed to speak again today.

“The 48 [hours] only relates to if we want to get it done before the election — which we do,” Pelosi said. “But we’re saying to them we have to freeze the design on some of these things — are we going with it or not, and what is the language?”

The White House and Pelosi appeared to be at odds more over the substance of the package and not the dollar amount. In an interview broadcast Saturday with a Milwaukee television station, Trump said he would approve a spending package that was larger than even the $2.2 trillion that Democrats had sought.

“If you said a trillion-eight, if you said 2 trillion, if you said 2 trillion-two — many numbers — I’m willing to go higher than that,” the president told Milwaukee-based WMTJ. “I will take care of that problem in two minutes,” if there’s a deal, he said of GOP senators wary of another large spending package.

“Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to approve anything because she wants to bail out poorly run Democrat states,” Trump said in the interview. “And we don’t want to do that.”

Pelosi has called for more money for states and cities, and Republican local leaders are among those who have asked for more aid, not just Democrats.

Pelosi has not spoken with Trump in over a year, but reiterated Sunday that she’s negotiating through his emissaries and there’s little point in talking directly with the president.

“You want to meet with him, you meet with him,” she told host George Stephanopoulos. “As far as I’m concerned, the speaker of the House must be respected in terms of what the purpose of the meeting is, what the preparation is for and what the likelihood of success would be.”

LITTLE WORDS MEAN A LOT

Millions remain out of work and in desperate straits. The economic recovery has slowed. A number of House Democrats have pressed Pelosi urgently to make a deal, but Pelosi has made clear she believes she has the leverage in the talks, and she showed no sign Sunday of backing down.

Mnuchin said Thursday that he was prepared to accept Pelosi’s demands for a national strategic testing plan, subject to minor edits. But Pelosi said Sunday that those edits turned out to be significant, including changing “shall” to “may,” “requirements” to “recommendations” and “a plan” to “a strategy, not a strategic plan.”

She said these word changes would give the White House too much flexibility to back out of commitments once the law is passed.

“When you say ‘may,’ you’re giving the president a slush fund. He may do this, he may grant, he may withhold,” Pelosi said. “When you say ‘shall,’ according to … what the science tells must happen … We can open our schools, we can open our businesses.”

Testing language is not the only major issue that remains outstanding. Pelosi and Mnuchin also have yet to come to terms on funding for cities and states, child care, tax credits for lower-income Americans, liability protections sought by Republicans, and more. They have areas of agreement, including aid to airlines and a new round of $1,200 stimulus checks to Americans.

Mnuchin is traveling in the Middle East, which could further complicate prospects for an outcome. A spokesperson for the treasury secretary had no immediate comment on Pelosi’s remarks.

Reaching agreement by Tuesday seems next to impossible. Even if they did, Senate Republicans have indicated strong opposition to the level of spending Pelosi and Mnuchin are discussing.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced Saturday that the Senate will be voting Wednesday on a narrow $500 billion bill, essentially the same legislation Democrats blocked last month. The bill will include money for schools and health care, liability protections, small-business spending and enhanced unemployment insurance that is lower than the $600 weekly that expired July 31. It does not include new relief checks for individuals.

McConnell said Saturday that if Pelosi and Mnuchin do reach a deal, “the Senate would of course consider it,” though it’s unclear precisely what that means.

DOLLAR CALLED SAFE

Additionally, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Sunday that the dollar won’t collapse despite rising federal debt and urged the government to ramp up economic stimulus.

“The dollar is the world’s safe haven. It’s the place that money moves into when people get nervous about the state of the world,” Summers said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

“All of the dangers are on the side of spending too little right now, rather than spending too much,” said Summers, who headed the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama and was Treasury chief for President Bill Clinton.

It’s “right to worry” about the country’s rising debt level, but in a near-zero interest rate environment the government can afford to borrow more, Summers said.

And instead of lending money to credit-worthy corporations, it should prioritize helping the unemployed and lower-income families, he added.

“The fact that we’ve got an interest rate that’s essentially zero is telling us that the funds are available, and they are not going to crowd out anything important,” Summers said.

Summers reiterated his forecast that the pandemic will end up costing the U.S. $16 trillion with the inclusion of the costs of lost lives and health on the economy, four times the cost of the Great Recession. He has previously warned that the U.S. economy would be in grave danger if federal stimulus lapses.